And for a certain faction of writers, it means NaNoWriMo has arrived. The goal of NaNoWriMo (NaNo for short, National Novel Writing Month for long) is pretty simple: Participants try to write 50,000 words of a novel during the thirty days of November. It’s a lot of fun, a great way to deal with writing slumps, and an awesome chance to meet and compete with other writers. NaNo prioritizes quantity over quality, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t produced some fabulous literature. A handful of bestselling novels started out as NaNo projects.

This year, for the first time in a long while, I’m sitting NaNo out. I’m hoping to ride the wave of NaNo energy (and take advantage of the write-ins going on around my campus) as I work on some other, long-delayed writing projects. By the end of November, my personal goal is to have submitted three new short stories for publication. I’m revising the first of these, a creepy Hansel and Gretel, and I’ve started working on the second, which so far involves two guys sitting in a barber shop. (Hopefully that description will sound more exciting when it’s finished!) Expect further updates as the month progresses!